All posts by GayFriendschat.com
Walking Into Conflict: Trans Woman and Visual Artist Yishay Garbasz on Chronicling Trauma
Walking Into Conflict: Trans Woman and Visual Artist Yishay Garbasz on Chronicling Trauma
“My job is not to document a story, or see right or wrong — you must step out of the way and allow the picture to enter the camera,” explains British-Israeli and Berlin-based artist, Yishay Garbansz. Her latest show is the solo exhibition “Severed Connection: Do what I say or they will kill you” at the Ronald Feldman Gallery running from May 9 – June 13 in NYC, which chronicles three sites of hot conflict and resounding trauma produced by fear of the other.
Shooting Conflict Zones
Garbasz spent the last 10 years traveling and photographing the DMZ as well as on the South Korean island Baengnyeongdo bordering North Korea, the entire length of the barrier from both sides in Israel and the occupied territories of Palestine, Fukoshima, Japan and lastly the Peace Lines of Northern Ireland and other local spots like the “Murder Triangle.” The images were created using a cumbersome large-format camera that must be hoisted onto a tripod before backloading a single negative. Amazingly, Garbasz dragged this kit along with her through check-points, minefields and radioactive wastelands to prevent herself from cheating and taking more images than necessary. Besides the expense, the bulky camera’s extensive set-up forces her to soak up the landscapes, wait patiently for the shot and resolve with her entire sensorium where the image lies; all this before assembling her gear for the shot. Only then will she step to the side and press once.
Capturing Trauma
The affective intensity of working at the scene of trauma is central to Garbasz’ practice. “Be afraid,” she tells me, then methodically “let the fear wash over you and the camera and hope that it stays, let it churn and be with it.” Her bearing witness and being open to ordinary people caught up in conflict is important because it allows her to be a witness “in a way that others were not there for me.” This project follows on from her acclaimed book In My Mother’s Footsteps (2009) that chronicles her movement as a young girl between Jewish Gettos, concentration camps and on a death march that her mother took through Germany from 1942-45. The desire to stand in the footsteps of others is powerful, and perilous. In the exhibition, blue footsteps, like those guiding tourists in South Korea to the ‘correct’ spot to take a picture, draw us into Garbasz’ perspective nestled amongst blood splattered buildings, bombs and radioactive waste. The resulting images are equally soaked in desperate color, evocative and haunting; they shatter our sense of life and death as separate worlds.
De-Humanization and Crowd Control
Growing up in Israel, the daughter of survivors and even as an officer in the Israeli army has its indelible impact, not least the sensitivity to how a people and individual persons can become simply enemy targets. Garbasz’ new work-in-development will focus on how soldiers and police officers eliminate the hesitation to kill another human through target practice. The show “Severed Connection” already consists of a body of work that is trying to pause this dehumanizing drilling practice by slowing us down to really look at how fear of the other is produced. By focusing on militarized spaces that use a ‘single dimension line of defense’ (wall, barrier, limit line) the artist critiques the demarcation of Us and Them. In terms of military tactics, Garbasz says these types of defense between neighboring states are historically weak and unsustainable because there is not enough distance to maintain a single line. Nevertheless, they are powerful spaces for maintaining control over your own people because of the constant tension and flare-ups that reinforce the fear of the (enemy) other. Thus, her images of, for example, tranquil scenes of rice fields that end at landmine fields remind us these are no ordinary landscapes but places that radiate fear in the social, national and global imaginary.
A Jewish Woman of Trans Experience
Though being a trans lesbian does not define these works, Garbasz has also chronicled her physical transition in Becoming (2010) a flipbook and a life-size scale model of a zoetrope with 28 images of her nude body taken over 28 weeks. Her own experiences of being ordinary, poor and, nevertheless, made into an image of the enemy other grants her “a trans sensitivity to being” for people who endure conflict and the micro and macro forms of trauma. Becoming a visually marked woman, congruent to her self-identity, also granted her a form of femme invisibility that allowed her access to wander past borders, and into restricted areas. For example, she made friends with laboring women on the island who took her through a field of landmines to where they harvest the best seaweed — Garbazs following precisely in their footsteps. Or in Fukoshima, she could have been arrested for a possible breach of security for filming the accident site, but she apologized profusely in Japanese in a ‘girly’ way. Being invisible to power, and perceived as incompetent sometimes helps. Being femme, which she loves, also enables her simply to do her job: to get up, go out and see. Being poor and without a car meant too that she would simply walk with her rolling suitcase carrying the hefty camera, to most eyes a non-threatening pedestrian, a nobody.
These works on display demonstrate that Yishay Garbasz has a commitment to look anew at others and their trauma. Each time she risks this relationship, from scratch, to fall in love with the thing that she most fears. There is no calculating your own risk in becoming fully open and exposed to the work. Simply go, step in and follow her footsteps. And watch out for the razor wire.
Yishay Garbansz is represented by the Ronald Feldman Gallery.
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts 31 Mercer St New York www.feldmangallery.com
Website: www.yishay.com/
Eliza Steinbock (Assistant Professor, Department of Film & Literary Studies, Leiden University Center for the Arts in Society) writes on contemporary philosophies of the body, visual culture and transfeminist issues. Recent publications include essays in the Journal of Homosexuality, Photography and Culture and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. For more information, please see www.elizasteinbock.com.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Everyone is Welcome in Clarksdale
Everyone is Welcome in Clarksdale
Clarksdale, Mississippi, known as the “Birthplace of the Blues,” welcomes people each day from around the nation and the world.
HRC.org
www.hrc.org/blog/entry/everyone-is-welcome-in-clarksdale?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed
Heterosexual Marriage Is The “Masterpiece Of Society,” According To Jesus By Way Of Pope Francis
Heterosexual Marriage Is The “Masterpiece Of Society,” According To Jesus By Way Of Pope Francis
Jesus teaches us that the masterpiece of society is the family: the man and the woman who love each other. In many countries, the number of separations is increasing, while the number of children is in decline. Christians do not marry only for themselves. They marry in the lord in favor of all the community, of society as a whole.”
— Pope Francis, perhaps trying to sway the upcoming SCOTUS ruling on same-sex marriage, in a public speech made April 30
Jeremy Kinser
Glenn Beck Predicts Church Attendance Will Drop 50% If Gay Marriage is Legalized: VIDEO
Glenn Beck Predicts Church Attendance Will Drop 50% If Gay Marriage is Legalized: VIDEO
Conservative nut Glenn Beck has predicted that a SCOTUS ruling in support of same-sex marriage will lead to a drop of 50 percent in church attendance in the next five years “because the stigma of going to church will be too much,” reports Right Wing Watch.
Said Beck, who last month suggested that the outcry following Indiana’s controversial #RFRA law would lead to Christians being put into concentration camp:
“Mark my words, if gay marriage goes through the Supreme Court and gay marriage becomes fine and they can put teeth in it so now they can go after churches, like the president’s lawyer says, 50 percent of our churches will fall away.
“Meaning, within five years, 50 percent of the congregants will fall away from their church because they won’t be able to take the persecution…within five years, 50 percent of the people that you sit next to in church will not be there. And not because [they agree with marriage equality but] because they’ll say, ‘I can’t do that, I’ll lose my job, people are picketing my house, I just can’t do that’”.
Watch, AFTER THE JUMP…
Jim Redmond
Gay Marriage is for Fags. ;-)
These Catholic School Students Have A Lot Of Love For Their Gay Teacher
These Catholic School Students Have A Lot Of Love For Their Gay Teacher
These high school students know a thing or two about love.
Students at V.J. and Angela Skutt Catholic High School in Omaha, Nebraska, are speaking out in support of an English teacher and speech team coach who was told his contract would not be renewed after he informed the school he was engaged to his boyfriend.
Matthew Eledge has been teaching at the high school since 2010, the Associated Press reports. According to KETV, Skutt Catholic President Jon McMahon defended the decision in a letter to the school community.
“If a staff member cannot commit to Catholic church teachings and doctrines, he or she cannot continue to be on staff at Skutt Catholic,” he wrote, according to KETV.
But the students at the school are not happy to hear that their beloved teacher has to leave.
KETV reported that during the school’s annual fundraising walk, some students wore T-shirts that presented the Omaha Catholic school with a message and a challenge.
“I support Mr. Eledge,” the shirts read. The Human Rights Campaign logo was on the front, and on the back, the shirts quoted Jesus’ words from John 13:34: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
“We can’t force a change, but we can inspire a change,” Skutt student Darya Kaboli-Nejad told KMTV.
Over 95,000 people have signed a Change.org petition to show their solidarity with Skutt students.
Kacie Hughes, who the AP reports is a close friend of Eledge’s and helps coach the school’s speech team with him, started the petition. In the online document, she called Eledge “a living example of what it means to be a SkyHawk,” the school’s mascot.
Eledge told BuzzFeed that that he was fully aware of the risks of working at a Catholic school as a gay man.
“It always was a bit fearful for me to work in that environment,” he said.
Omaha has an anti-bias ordinance on the books that protects LGBT people from workplace discrimination. But experts told the AP that the school is likely protected by a religious exception.
Skutt Catholic High School and Eledge did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In a statement, Deacon Timothy F. McNeil of the Archdiocese of Omaha said, “I can confirm: Mr. Eledge is not returning to Skutt Catholic H.S. next year.”
These high schoolers certainly aren’t alone. Studies show that the majority of American Catholics don’t agree with the church’s official stance on gay marriage. The Public Religion Research Institute found that 61 percent of white Catholics and 60 percent of Hispanic Catholics in America support allowing gay and lesbian couples to tie the knot.
Younger Catholics are especially likely to favor legalizing same-sex marriage. A Pew Research Center study found that three-quarters of Catholics under the age of 30 support same-sex marriage.
For Hughes, Catholicism’s strong tradition of social justice far outweighs church doctrine towards homosexuality. She sees Eledge’s firing as discrimination.
In her petition, she writes:
When Mr. Eledge, or any other teacher, becomes engaged, what they do in their private life is between themselves and God. Not for us to assume or judge. Furthermore, if [the school fires] Mr. Eledge for engaging in a same-sex relationship, they must avoid discrimination. They will need to fire any single teacher who is living with their partner or engaging in sexual activity, any divorced person who has remarried without an annulment, or any married couple using contraceptives.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
National Adoption Organization Takes Stand for Marriage Equality
National Adoption Organization Takes Stand for Marriage Equality
In a blog post this week, the Donaldson Adoption Institute (DAI) endorsed nationwide marriage equality in support of thousands of youth in need of foster or adoptive parents.
HRC.org
This Rural Pastor Hopes To Sway SCOTUS Into Voting Against Marriage Equality With His Church’s Antigay Sign
This Rural Pastor Hopes To Sway SCOTUS Into Voting Against Marriage Equality With His Church’s Antigay Sign
A pastor in Milledgeville, Georgia (pop. 19,256) is using the marquee outside his church to broadcast a message of hate towards gay people. He says he hopes the sign will sway the U.S. Supreme Court into ruling against marriage equality.
Pastor Robert Lee (pictured) of the Ten Commandments Church called homosexuality a “death worthy crime” on a billboard outside his church, and he’s not apologizing for it.
“Homosexuality is a terrible thing,” he told local TV station WGXA News. “It’s an abomination, so we are trying to inform people exactly what scripture says about it. Homosexuals are destroying this society.”
In a separate billboard Lee called gays and lesbians “disgraces to humanity.”
Related: Me Speak English Good: When Homophobes Fail With Their Antigay Signage
The unapologetic bitch said that he will happily continue posting the signs to get his point across and that he’d rather “die” than accept gay members into his congregation.
“Homosexuality has to be at least as heinous as murder,” Lee opined to The Huffington Post. “My way of thinking comes from scripture. It does not come from any political view. I see a homosexual just like a murderer.”
But not everyone in Milledgeville agrees with Lee’s extreme views.
“This is the first time that I have ever seen anything that actually crossed the line and was inferring death upon a group,” Robert Owens told WGXA News.
Lee says he carefully timed the billboard to coincide with the Supreme Court hearing arguments about the constitutionality of gay marriage. He hopes the justices will notice it and get the message.
“The institution of marriage was instituted by God,” Lee told WGXA News, “and it should not be changed by people who deserve not to live.”
Related: Anglican Church Has A Message For Homophobic Christians: “Get Over It”
Graham Gremore
Child in Shopping Cart
